Saturday, November 08, 2008

Nano Nanny

I was at a discussion this afternoon on the global financial crisis and its implications. Towards the end, activist and journalist Nilanjan Dutta mentioned Noam Chomsky's use of the term "nanny state" to refer to the practice of state bail-out of collapsing delinquent corporations.

My friend Sandip Bandyopadhyay couldn't help saying aloud "Nano state", which could apply to our own deeply beloved govt of West Bengal.

Perhaps we should now start calling the CPI(M) led govt of West Bengal, Nano Nanny.

Earlier this year, another close friend (who must remain anonymous) had sent me his poem, in Bangla, on the Nano affair. I wanted to carry that too here, in Bangla, as its simply untranslatable. But I could not find it. However, I did eventually find it and so I'm reproducing that below.

4 comments:

bagchipar
said...

i have missed ur discussion but it is evident that the nano-episode is still in the stage. i think it prudent to call the state govt as NANO since all its componenets have fitted in such a manner so that there is hardly any space to accomodate anything from outside of their arena----- arena of thinking, ideology or opinion. these selfdeclared "sobjanta"s are best fitted in nano. isn't it ?

Hi, thanks for your comment. That is most interesting indeed! I never considered the ordinary meaning of "nano" in the term "Nano state". If "nanny" state is a hyper-bloated state, then "nano" state would appear to be what would be most beloved to conservatives, who want the state to withdraw from everuthing, minimise public expenditure etc. But with the Tata Nano, nano becomes nanny, a conflation of opposite. Wonderful! Like left has become right, and right has become left (in the context of Singur, Nandigram). Great things happening here indeed!

and it is "nano" which is responsible for this topsy-turvy . if there would be no "nano" we could not visualize how the left becomes right and vice versa.some of our industry-lovers had described the nano project as flagship project in terms of industrialisation of this state but it became the flagship of turning LEFT to right. ironically this NANO project has placed the LEFT not in front rather in rear-stall and it is the RIGHT who occuppied frontseat , i think in right manner.